


lockless

by plantyourtreeswithme



Series: Terrifying Tolkien Week Fics [1]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 16:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4487121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plantyourtreeswithme/pseuds/plantyourtreeswithme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Orc-taunter. Fire-leaper. Daughter of Mirkwood with flame-hair and flame-eyes and flame-tongue.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Eniel.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	lockless

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for [Terrifying Tolkien Week](http://acefandomite.tumblr.com/post/125550431212/acornshields-official-tag-terrifying-tolkien)!
> 
> Sindarin translations were found at [this translator](http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/angora5/Translator.html) and from [this site](http://www.arwen-undomiel.com/elvish/phrases.html).
> 
> I've also used an html feature that translates Sindarin if you scroll your mouse over it. It's really cool and available [here](http://plantyourtreeswithme.tumblr.com/post/125435570772/hi-first-of-all-i-want-to-say-that-your-writing) if you want to use it. Translations are also available at the end if you're on mobile.
> 
> This fic is also available on [my tumblr](http://plantyourwordswithme.tumblr.com/tagged/lockless) and in the [Terrifying Tolkien Week tag](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/terrifying-tolkien-week).

_A hairless elf would never be welcomed back to Mirkwood,_  Ena thought as she ran _. No, Thranduil sets too much of an example with those golden strands of his…_

And she was too proud to give them reasons: the reason why she was bald, the reason why she had been gone for so many months, the reason why there were shackles clasped around her wrists and ankles…

The orcs - whose names she had never bothered to remember - had shaved her head on the first day. They had taken pleasure in watching her auburn locks drift down to the ground as the knife chafed against her head. The tiny cuts from where the razor had nicked her scalp faded quickly, but she never forgave them for it. Her hair had been her pride, her  _aglar_ , something that her mother, Meriel, had always braided for her when she was young. It was a ritual between the two of them; something that Ena would look forward to every morning. 

She had been on a patrol with her sister Tauriel and Legolas when the orcs came. Tauriel was captain of the guard, so she was almost always on duty, and Ena hardly ever saw her. Ena had pleaded with Thranduil to let her ignore her job as lookout for the day and spend time with her sister. He had reluctantly agreed to give her a half-day, and as soon as she had handed her post over to her younger brother, Lamruil, she had burst out of the gates of the Elvenking’s Halls and gone sprinting into the forest in search of Tauriel.

_ "No dirweg, Legolas, ten' Eniel neva!" _

Legolas had whipped around at those words, nocking an arrow so fast that she didn't even see it.  _"Vedui', Eniel,"_  he said coolly, and loosed the arrow, hitting a giant spider that had been creeping in the shadows behind Ena.

She didn’t even bother to look back and see if he had hit his mark; she knew that he had.

 _"Manke - ?"_  she started, but she was cut off by a cry uttered from above her.

“Ena!” Tauriel cried, and dropped to the ground in front of her, a wide smile on her face.  _"Mae l'ovannen, seler'!"_

 _"Man ceril?"_  Ena asked, then decided that it would be easier to switch to Westron. “What are you doing so far out in the forest? I thought we had the spider population under control for the most part.”

“King Thranduil ordered us to find all of the nests and destroy them,” Tauriel said. “We have been negligent in our watch of them, and they have spread again.”

 _"Gwaem!"_  Ena said cheerfully. “We have work to do.”

She led the way through the forest, speaking rapidly in Sindarin to Tauriel. Her sister seemed amused by her ramblings, and only joined in with a few sentences. Legolas trailed behind, on the lookout for more spider nests. They were continually getting farther and farther away from Thranduil’s halls, but Ena paid no notice; she was just glad to be talking with Tauriel again, after being apart from her for so long.

They started to circle back to their realm of Mirkwood, taking a different route that was noticeably more cobwebby. Ena reached out at one point to brush aside a spiderweb, looking over her shoulder at Tauriel, and found an orc grimacing back at her.

 _"Ai!"_  she shrieked, completely shocked. Legolas and Tauriel instantly drew arrows from their quivers and set them to their bowstrings, but the orc was too fast. It reached forward and snatched Ena around the waist, ignoring her punches and rapidly-fired insults in Sindarin.

 _"Leithio nin! Sevig thû úan ar' lle ier pe-channas!"_  She bit down on the orc’s arm as he swung her over his shoulder, and he growled, but didn’t falter. Legolas and Tauriel loosed arrow after arrow at him and his comrades, but they were heavily armored and wore shields strapped to their wrists that they used to deflect the arrows.

 _"Drego! An ngell nîn,"_  Ena cried to her former companions, knowing that there was no hope. If they continued to shoot at the orcs, they would only be captured or killed.

 _"Guren níniatha n'i lû n'i a-govenitham,"_  Tauriel called after her, tears leaking from her eyes as she obeyed her sister’s wish.

 _Oh, how cruel a fate,_  Ena had thought,  _to see my sister again for the first time in months, only to be ripped away again in a matter of hours._

 

* * *

 

Thus, she had been taken to Mordor, dragged along behind her captors through glen and valley. As they paced towards the shadow in the east, the landscape around them became continually darker and more forlorn: burning plains, piles of bodies, and horrible images that would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life (if she survived).

The Dead Marshes was the one place that stuck out to her - she had read books upon books about the Battle of Dagorlad. The pale, shimmering lights that drifted around, even in the sunlight, enamored her, and if not for the coarse rope tied around her hands, she would have gone off and investigated them.

The orcs had knocked her out after that, a sharp rap to the temple enough to make her unconscious. Apparently, they hadn’t wanted her to know how to get into Sauron’s stronghold - not that she would have wanted to come back.

They had shaved her head as soon as she woke up, laughing and jeering in foul Black Speech. Ena had sat proudly on the stool they had given her as if it were a throne and spat,  _"Pedin i phith in aníron, a nin ú-cheniathagir,"_  in Sindarin.

That had earned her a hard slap on the cheek, and thence, her hell began.

Ena was set to work in sweltering heat, harnessed to a great gear and walking in endless circles to turn it. She had no idea what the purpose of the giant cog was - was it part of a machine? Was it just for the orc drivers’ entertainment? Oh, if only Thranduil could see her now, toiling for endless hours and doing monotonous, miserable work that seemingly had no point.

She did not dare hope for a rescuer, nor did she stoop that low. Eniel was no mortal, no damsel in distress; had she not frightened Legolas the other day in the woods, causing him to nock an arrow faster than light?

~~But that wasn’t the other day, it couldn’t be. It was the other month, the other year. Wasn’t it?~~

At night, she was escorted to her cell and put into a different set of chains. How she loathed those few moments when she was alone, for she knew that they were preparing the whips and the iron rods dipped in coals and the  _fire_.

Ena learned to hate fire. Before, in Mirkwood, when they had set great bonfires ablaze to clear the areas filled with dead trees, she had loved it. She had danced around it, marveling at the way it flickered and shot sparks.  _"A tula náressë!"_  she had called to Lamruil and Tauriel, her siblings who had always shied away from it. They had been afraid of it, scared of the destruction it caused, the way it could burn and scorch trees in an instant.

But then, she had always been a bit of a daredevil.

Which, she supposed, was what made her continue to cast insults at the orcs, spitting in their faces and cursing their spawn. She was Eniel: orc-taunter, fire-leaper, daughter of Mirkwood with flame-hair and flame-eyes and flame-tongue.

Sauron was too important to torture her (or maybe she was too lowly in his eyes), so he gave the task to his brutes. “Where is it?” they asked her repeatedly in broken Westron. “Where are they hiding it?”

 _“Ú-iston,”_  she cried, gritting her teeth and struggling not to scream, “I don’t know, I don’t know!”

“Tell us, wretch!”

 _"Avon,"_  she said. Her voice caught in her throat, and she breathed in ragged gasps, choking. “I won’t ever tell you, I don’t even know what it is you’re looking for -”

They left soon afterwards, disappointed. “We’ll try again tomorrow,” they leered, but she knew that she would never tell them. And they knew, too.

After that, she was finally alone, the utter darkness of the room threatening to suffocate her. Her sobs mingled with the sound of dripping water in the corner of the cell. She cried herself to sleep, so exhausted that her dreams did not come.

The days went on. Work, torture, sleep. Work, torture, sleep. Sometimes food and water. Sometimes the occasional shave - her fiery locks kept attempting to grow back, much to her captors’ chagrin.

The cycle continued. Her silvery scars did not fade, and only grew in number. She stopped crying after the first week, and resolved to be hard and grim, to never say a single word. Sauron’s foul stronghold did not deserve the lilting, flowing language of Sindarin, so she would speak no more of it.

Ena didn’t even notice the chafing of the cuffs around her arms and legs anymore, didn’t even notice the searing pain of the hot iron rods pressed against her skin. Agony was a sensation that she was becoming accustomed to, and she didn’t know if that was good or bad.

She was waiting in her cell for her persecutors one night for what felt like the millionth time when muffled cries sounded from outside.

 _They’re punishing young orcs,_  she thought dimly, so used to the idea that no one would rescue her that she didn’t realize that that was exactly what was happening.

Lamruil - her brother, a face that she had never expected to see again in her life - burst inside, an elvish sword in hand and black blood smeared on his cloak. Ena winced at the sudden light, which she hadn’t seen since the afternoon. With four quick strokes, he cut through the chains holding her suspended in the air, and she fell to the ground, not daring to believe her eyes.

 _"Toror'?"_  she asked faintly, her voice hoarse from disuse.  _"Man cerig?"_

 _"Odulen an edraith angin, Eniel,"_  he said, pulling her into a warm embrace. She stiffened at his touch and made to draw back, forgetting that he didn’t mean to hurt her.

“What have they done to you, Eniel?” he asked, letting go and staring at the scars on her arms that danced in the torchlight.

“Never mind that,  _gwaem, gwaem_ ,” she urged, pulling him towards the doorway.

He led her through the halls of Dol Guldur, following a morbid path of slain orcs. They left through a side entrance of the fortress, one that Sauron obviously didn’t pay enough attention to. Lamruil had apparently snuck through unnoticed, silencing any orc that attempted to sound the alarm with his blade.

_ "Sut an - ?" _

“Two years,” Lamruil replied, cutting her off and pulling on her arm, forcing her into a run. “ _Gwaem_ , Eniel, we must hurry. The Eye will see us soon, and we need a head start.”

“It seems... longer than two years,” she murmured, barely noticing the soft thud as Lamruil fell to the ground, a black, crudely-made arrow sticking out of his back.

 _"Noro!"_  he choked, blood seeping out of his mouth and the light slowly fading from his eyes.

Ena faltered for a moment, her mouth trembling, then kept going.

On the third day of straight running - how strange it was that she hadn’t tired yet - she reached the Dead Marshes.

And there, she stopped again.

“What’s your name?” she asked the specter, staring at the candle clutched in the ghost’s hand.

 _“Erolith,”_  the elf said, a small smile on his face.  _“I am sorry you have suffered so,_ henig _.”_

“So am I. I do wish it would end,” she said quietly, sinking into the bog.

 _“All you need to do,”_  he told her,  _“is let go. It’s easy.”_

“Will it hurt?”

 _“No,_ lisse' er _,”_  he said.  _“Not at all.”_

Eniel closed her eyes and fell forward into the marsh.  _What an awful dream,_  she thought.  _Thank Yavanna it’s over now._

Her head was lockless and her eyes did not shine. Thranduil surely wouldn’t allow her to come back with no hair. Perhaps she would lie there for a while and wait for it to grow back...

**Author's Note:**

>  **Sindarin Translations (in order of appearance)**  
>  _aglar_ \- radiance; glory  
>  _No dirweg, Legolas, ten’ Eniel neva!_ \- Beware, Legolas, for Eniel is near!  
>  _Vedui’, Eniel_ \- Greetings, Eniel  
>  _Manke - ?_ \- Where - ?  
>  _Mae l’ovannen, seler’!_ \- Well met, sister!  
>  _Man ceril?_ \- What are you doing?  
>  _Gwaem!_ \- Let’s go!  
>  _Ai!_ \- Eek!  
>  _Leithio nin! Sevig thû úan ar’ lle ier pe-channas!_ \- Release me! You smell like a monster and you are lacking intelligence!  
>  _Drego! An ngell nîn_ \- Flee! Please (lit. for my happiness)  
>  _Guren níniatha n’i lû n’i a-govenitham_ \- My heart shall weep until I see you again  
>  _Pedin i phith in aníron, a nin ú-cheniathagir_ \- I can say what I wish, and you can’t understand me  
>  _A tula náressë!_ \- Come near the fire!  
>  _ú-iston_ \- I don’t know  
>  _avon_ \- I won’t  
>  _Toror’?_ \- Brother?  
>  _Man cerig?_ \- What are you doing?  
>  _Odulen an edraith angin, Eniel_ \- I’m here to save you, Eniel  
>  _Sut an - ?_ \- How long - ?  
>  _henig_ \- my child  
>  _lisse’ er_ \- sweet one
> 
> The awesomely horrific painting is by the talented [zebotc](http://zebotc.tumblr.com)!


End file.
